


welcome to the wolf pack

by cebw12



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Agender Character, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family, Flirting, Gen, Gender Identity, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 03:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7388107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cebw12/pseuds/cebw12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Tony finds his place in the clone family, Sarah grapples with her own gender identity. </p><p>Agender!Sarah Manning, Tony with a braid, and lots of Sarah/Tony brotp moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	welcome to the wolf pack

Sarah winces, just audibly enough, at the needle. "You do that every week?"

Tony flicks the syringe twice, checking for bubbles. "That's right, sweetheart. It's certainly better than the alternative."

"And what's that?" She leans forward, chin resting on her hands.

Tony is quiet, he just nods, at Sarah, but not looking her in the eyes, and- _oh_. She folds her arms in her lap, slightly less comfortably than before.

"No offense, though."

She doesn't say anything. It's not really an insult, is it? They're the same, but Tony is a different shape, like Cosima, like Helena, none of them are the same puzzle piece.

"If you're staying," Felix's voice bursts in from the other room, "I'm givin' you a haircut." He makes a path through the beaded curtain, sticking his head into the living room.

"Aw, piss off," Tony calls back. Sarah can't help but laugh, looking at the two of them must be a trip. Their hair is the same color, with the same unruliness, they could almost be brother and sister. Almost.

Sarah turns away in time for Tony to stick the needle in his thigh, but she catches him laughing.

"We're clones, why're you the one pissing yourself about a needle?"

"You just got lucky there, mate," she says.

* * *

 Tony's house is wooden and smells like old paint, and it's there that Sarah finds herself staring at herself in his full-length mirror. She's not looking. His whole house is cooler and cleaner than she had expected, like somewhere she might have lived if things had gone differently, if she had gotten Kira back for good and never met Beth Childs.

She's not looking because the mirror is reflecting a picture of _her_ , and a lot of words with it. Words like _he_  and _she_  and she sees her hair and thinks of Tony, and how they could have been the same. Or maybe not. Maybe they can't ever be the same, by fate or genetics, they are predisposed to be unique.

He's invited her over for beers, because he's "tired of those pansy drinks Felix serves." He comes out of the kitchen.

"What I don't get, is why if we're genetically identical, I'm the only one like me." He hands her a beer. At least it's cold.

"Like you?" She leans into the doorframe, not sure where to rest her eyes or her feet. 

"Y'know, trans. Why am I the only trans clone?" He asks. It's not meant to be answered.

Sarah makes a "pshh" noise and shrugs, "You've gotta ask Cos about the science shit, s'really not my area."

"Yeah, yeah." He slumps onto his couch, and gestures for Sarah to come sit. His arms, his legs, they fall the way Sarah's do, lazy and unconfined, but his skin is tanner and taughter, and freckled with dark hairs.

She wonders, she can't help it, if her chest would look the same way under tight spandex. There's nothing separating them except for a concept someone drew in the air that made them male and female. There's nothing, except a lifetime of choices, of mirror images separating somewhere outside of the womb.

They're quiet, and Tony tilts his head up to the ceiling, and Sarah can't see his eyes. "Look, I get it," he says finally.

"What?"

"You'n the rest of your sisters, you don't understand it. You think it's weird that we're so alike, but I took a different path." He glances at her.

Her lips move into a slow smile, "You're making a lot of guesses there, mate."

"Maybe," he shruggs, "but tell me I'm wrong."

He's not really wrong. And Sarah would tell him that, but he'll laugh, he won't believe it. He won't believe that Sarah looks at him and sees her hands and her hips and her jaw, and he's opened some kind of door. A door that lets it all come rushing in - doubts, yes, but mostly awe. That would be the word. She looks at him, and she's in awe.

She suddenly feels the condensation from the glass collecting in her palm, and wipes it on her jeans. "Maybe, maybe not. Maybe we're not so different," she tries to soften it with a shrug, mostly for herself, because she doesn't know what those words could mean.

He groans, seems to sink farther into the couch. "You think about gender much?" It's a weird question. It twists in her stomach.

"Not really," she takes a drink, "I don't think it matters that much."

Tony laughs, and it's sharp. "Yeah, it does. You can shop in the men's section all you want, but it matters."

Sarah turns to face him, looking into his eyes that are hers too, only hers are brighter. "You think you're the only one who gets this shit? I've had to be a mother and a father to my kid, and it doesn't make a bit of difference, except that she gets left alone way too often-" her voice cracks, and she stops, and she breathes.

"Fine, fine. I've got friends that aren't men or women, that's fine. Maybe you're like that, too." He says the last part as a joke, maybe.

"I'm _not_."

* * *

 Her hands are the same as his, so what does that make her? She's not square, or hard, but she's not Cosima, or Alison, with a gentleness and ease. She just _is_.

Kira comes in sometime in the middle of the night, and Sarah wakes up with her curled up in the curve of her stomach. The way she carried her. And she's right, she's been a mother and a father, and she's been shit at both. But everything she has, she's given it to Kira. And it doesn't matter, does it? It doesn't matter that she's nothing like Tony, and even less like her sisters. She is a part of Kira, and Kira is curled up in her stomach.

* * *

The next day Felix's loft is humming with activity. Felix broods in the kitchen, looking hungover, and not too happy about his home becoming the designated Clone Club meetingplace. It's alive, and it's all moving around Tony.

Alison gives up on cleaning, because every time she bends over to sweep, she hears a muffled "damn girl", and she makes a huffing noise in return. Cosima somehow manages to coax Tony onto the floor, where she can reach his hair from the couch, and is trying to braid it.

Helena's off somewhere with Tony's phone.

"Sorry for snapping at you yesterday," Sarah says, finding a place on the floor next to him.

He shakes his head, snorts, punches her shoulder. "Y'know I'm just playin' with you, right? Don't have some midlife gender crisis cause of me."

"I think I'll wait 'til I'm forty for a midlife crisis." 

Cosima dangles off the couch so that her hands can talk in their direction, "It's really cool, actually, because coming from a scientific standpoint, your DNA is the same as ours-"

"Here we go again," Tony groans. Feigning despair, he leans on Sarah's arm, "You gotta get me out of this shit-hole, all they talk about is science."

"Hey," Cosima shrugs, her whole body lifting from the couch, "we're all science, buddy."

Tony grins, "Well if we've figured anything out, it's that science looks pretty damn good, whatever gender."

Sarah's not sure what to make of it, except that her genetic identical is _probably_  hitting on her, and she's surprisingly okay with it. It's something about him, something that tells her it's okay that she doesn't look like Cosima or Alison, that she _can_  just be.

"Alright, new guy," Cosima sits back, "you're all done! I haven't braided hair in ages."

Tony grunts, but he likes it.

* * *

 They both need to blow of steam, often. That's another thing they have in common. Sarah finds Tony with his hands in his pockets, kicking at a garbage can, the hot night air and minor exertion making his forehead gleam.

"What'd the garbage do this time?"

"Stay out of it, princess," he grumbles.

Sarah lets out a sharp breath, disbelieving. "Asshole."

She lets the breeze blow away her momentary anger. She moves behind Tony, gives the can a slightly less aggressive kick. It's an apology.

He finally turns to her. "I'm not gonna lie, this clone thing threw me for a loop."

She shoves her hands in her pockets too, taking a step towards him, "Yeah, that's... Understandable."

"No," he laughs, "I mean, I coulda' turned out like Alison."

"I don't think so... I mean, there's some part of us-" She shakes her head. She grapples with this invisible creature, the one that follows her but she never sees, the one that Tony has to pin down every day. "Shit, I don't know what I'm talking about. But I don't think I'm much like Alison either."

Tony's thinking, he wants to press, but he doesn't, and Sarah's grateful for that. Some things can't be explained with words, but they can be felt on the warm breeze, the sweat. He drags his foot across the ground. "No, I don't think you are."

Sarah sighs and slumps, her thumbs running over her palms in her pockets. Tony pulls out a cigarette.

"You got a light?"

**Author's Note:**

> By the way, if you're ever injecting testosterone (or anything else), DON'T flick the syringe. That is unsafe, and was a character choice. 
> 
> With that aside, I'm very curious to hear what people think about this au, especailly opinions on gender identity.
> 
> As always, leave a comment if you liked it! Thanks for reading.


End file.
